Streets Of Your Town

David Bowie's "Let's Dance" 30 years on

In 2013, Fairfax spoke with Joelene King, the star of David Bowie's Let's Dance video, about its importance for Aboriginal Australians 30 years on.

Three years before Crocodile Dundee, David Bowie's famous 1983 film clip to Let's Dance, which swung a spotlight on indigenous struggles, was shot on location in Carinda, rural NSW. Then the music video for China Girl was filmed in Sydney the same year.

Bowie was said to have a particular affinity for Australia. As a boy, he was fascinated by an image of Ayers Rock on a Stravinsky album cover.

Incredible talent and creativity... David Bowie performs at the Sydney Entertainment Centre in 2003. His songs will live on. Photo: Domino Postiglione

Later, he took four world tours here and, for several years, kept an apartment in harbourside Sydney.

He first came down under in 1978 to play a string of packed-out stadium concerts. In Melbourne, where fans camped outside the MCG for three weeks prior, the concert drew a crowd of 60,000 people. At the time, it was his largest show anywhere in the world.

He called being lost for words when he first met Bowie backstage in Adelaide.

"Bowie sat himself down right opposite me for dinner, and I couldn't think of anything to say," Bidstrup recalls. "I just said, 'Good food, eh?'

"And from then on we watched every bloody show, and learned heaps."

Bowie later joined The Angels for post-gig drinks in Brisbane, a dinner at The Sebel in Sydney, and at a party in London. Bidstrup said Bowie seemed humble and quietly spoken at those social events, but he would always remember him as he was on stage, for his stunning showmanship.

"The way he ran his shows was just amazing. Doc [Neeson] and I would sit there each night on tour, starting off on the side of the show, but we would always end having to go out there, out in front."

In 1983, for his Serious Moonlight tour, Bowie returned to Australia for capital city shows. On the European leg, he invited Australian band Icehouse to play as the supporting act.

Former Icehouse band member John Lloyd said they were approached by Bowie at a music festival in Germany.

"We were in the middle of playing, and someone pointed side-stage and there he was, Bowie, watching us ... It was like God had just walked in to the room," Lloyd said.

"For a band in Australia being asked to join him on tour, it was just incredible, a real honour. It doesn't get much better than that."

Icehouse played several shows across Europe with Bowie, including some than drew crowds of more than 80,000 "It was just a frenzy ... British fans were chomping at the bit to see him," Lloyd said.

"His legacy on music is unfathomable. He is just gigantic. Song after song, album after album, he broke the mold he set for himself. He was just a brilliant man."

Bowie's subsequent visits to Australia, in 1987 for his Glass Spider tour and in 2004 for A Reality tour, were similarly drew large crowds.

His status in Australia was highlighted last year when the David Bowie Is exhibition came to Melbourne and broke ticket sales records at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image.